/*
 *  Copyright 2013 National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
 *  
 *  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 *  you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 *  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *  
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *  
 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 *  limitations under the License.
 */

package org.sss.mapreduce;

import java.io.IOException;

import org.sss.mapreduce.datatype.Packable;

/**
 * SSS uses <code>Decoder</code> to decode a <code>Packable</code> object
 * from a sequence of bytes.
 */
public interface Decoder {
  /**
   * Decode a <code>Packable</code> object from a sequence of bytes.
   *
   * @param  b  a sequence of bytes to be decoded
   * @return decoded <code>Packable</code> object
   * @throws IOException
   */
  Packable decode(byte[] b) throws IOException;
}
